New orientations(don't really know what to call them)

[Verkio]

I would like to suggest a new orientation mark(?) on the right side of the NavBall. This orientation mark will indicate the actual position of where your vessel is going to land/dock. I really would like this to be added as sometimes (I just started playing a month ago) I just don't know where I'm going to land.

[Tex]

The trouble is that the navball isn't there to show locations, which is what it sounds like you're talking about. If you want to be sure of where you land, you want your retrograde marker (the green/yellow one with an X in the middle of it) to be at the very middle of the blue hemisphere. That indicates that you're going straight down. Other than that, you have to eyeball it.

Using the prograde and retrograde markers to determine which direction you're going is just a skill you'll develop over time. You'll get there.

Also, welcome to the forums!

Edited March 3, 2016 by Maximus97

[Wjolcz]

There's the Trajectories mod which I highly recommend installing. Some sort of landing site prediction in the map view would be great to have in stock.

[Verkio]

Thank you for all the explanations and I'll try to get more familiarised with KSP. And I'll definitely download the Trajectories mod...........

[Snark]

Actually, there is one navigational enhancement that one could do, which I think would make sense in the context of the navball:  a "projected impact marker".  I've actually been thinking about it for a while, and whether it might make a useful addition to BetterBurnTime. 

Imagine that you're in the following situation:

• You're at a vacuum world, so everything's smoothly ballistic
• You're on a suborbital trajectory, i.e. heading towards impact landing.
• You'd like to land next to a specific target on the surface (e.g. right next to your already-landed base).

That can be kinda hard to judge.  It could be handy if there were an additional marker on the navball (nothing big, say a discreet little X) that marks "this is the direction to the place where you will be landing on the surface."  It takes into account the following things:  1. your trajectory, 2. the planet's terrain, 3. the planet's rotation.

It seems to me that a marker like that would make it much easier to navigate to a pinpoint landing next to a target.  If I do some course adjustments so that the little "you will land here" marker is precisely lined up with the "target" marker, I'm doing pretty well.

It's not a silver bullet.  For one thing, assuming that I want to land by the target and not just coast down my suborbital trajectory and slam into it, I'll be firing my engines retrograde for a non-zero length of time in order to brake to a halt.  And since I'm not going straight down, firing my engines is going to affect the location of where I arrive at the surface.  So there would be a certain amount of judgment to do, there, and likely I'd want to have my impact marker appear slightly above (i.e. closer to the zenith than) the target marker while I'm coasting towards my doom landing.

But even so, having an impact marker on the navball seems like it could be a useful visual reference point.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Snark

[StarManta]

I think a visual marker in the main camera view makes a lot more sense than anything you could possibly put on the navball.

[nikokespprfan]

What could be interesting though, is a navball marker displaying the normal vector of the slope. That way you can see on the navball if your landing site is level enough for landing.

[John FX]

The landing assistant in Mechjeb will show you a landing prediction in the map view that accounts for planetary rotation, as has been said trajectories is a small mod that does a very similar thing without the extra padding that comes with Mechjeb.

I totally agree that Betterburntimes is very good for increasing the accuracy of your manoeuvrers, especially when combined with Kerbal Engineer Redux.

IIRC scansat can tell you the slope at a particular point once you have mapped a body.

IMHO all of these features would be good to have in stock.

[Snark]

4 hours ago, John FX said:

The landing assistant in Mechjeb will show you a landing prediction in the map view that accounts for planetary rotation, as has been said trajectories is a small mod that does a very similar thing without the extra padding that comes with Mechjeb.

Yes, a marker in map view could be nice, too.  However, the map view only lets you zoom in just so far, and when you get down to that last couple of kilometers is where a lot of the difference comes in.  So a map view marker would be complementary to a navball indicator.

4 hours ago, StarManta said:

I think a visual marker in the main camera view makes a lot more sense than anything you could possibly put on the navball.

I could see both advantages and disadvantages to a marker in camera view as opposed to the navball.  On the one hand, it would give a very intuitive, easy-to-see indicator.  On the other hand, a few things:

• It would mean you'd have to keep the camera oriented in a particular way to keep the marker in view
• It might be harder to steer:  let's say you see the marker, and you see that it's too far downrange (or left or right or whatever) and you need to do some burning to correct your course, it could be tricky to figure out how to orient your ship for the burn.  If it's on the navball, where you see it alongside the current-velocity markers and the orientation is independent of camera view, it would be a lot clearer.
• Personal preference.  Some people may like "instrumentation" info in the main camera view, others do not.  I tend to prefer minimal information in the main camera view-- basically, just vessel labels.  Adding more instrumentation graphics to the main camera window is somewhat immersion-breaking for me (it's why I tend to avoid any mods that have pop-up UI).

Not saying it's a bad idea ... just that there are tradeoffs there.

[Gojira1000]

I'll admit I'm still awful at targeted landing sites in an atmosphere. But you do get better at it. It's really a practice-makes-perfect regime in guesstimating your landing point.

And, oddly, I like that, as I feel accomplished when I land within a kilometer of my target

[Benoit Hage]

What about the opening of your drogues and parachutes and the jettison of the heat shield? Those would alter your estimated landing zone as you are human input.

[John FX]

4 hours ago, Snark said:

the map view only lets you zoom in just so far, and when you get down to that last couple of kilometers is where a lot of the difference comes in.

I cannot count the times i have wanted to zoom in a bit more in the map so that the information I am being shown actually makes sense.

I have long thought that being able to zoom in more in the map screen would benefit all users greatly.

[Verkio]

On 3/4/2016 at 6:03 AM, Gojira1000 said:

I'll admit I'm still awful at targeted landing sites in an atmosphere. But you do get better at it. It's really a practice-makes-perfect regime in guesstimating your landing point.

And, oddly, I like that, as I feel accomplished when I land within a kilometer of my target

 

Well, I agree. I haven't been practising landing on another celestial body. And furthermore, my computer is laggy as hell. So it'll be hard to manoeuvre my vessel for landing. But I'll try to strengthen up my PC. Thanks for all the suggestions and tips!

[Octa]

Emmm...which one of these is correct?

• A node which marks the intersection point of an orbit with the surface of a body
• A marker that behaves like the target nodes used for docking, but
  • it can be placed on a surface
  • it rotates with the surface
  • could be veritcally offset to mark a point a few meters above the landing spot for safety margin

I guess the 1st would be roughly somewhere around the retrograde marker. I don't know how i could use this information from the second one for an instrument only landing, as i mostly eyeball my manual landings. But i'm sure some rocket scientists can come up with a solution.